How Europe came close to killing the Atlantic fishery

A new study by the World Wildlife Fund reports that the world’s fish and wildlife populations declined by a startling 52 per cent between 1970 and 2010. One case hits close to home:

In what surely ranks as one of the greatest environmental crimes of the 20th century, the European Union gave its fishing fleets free rein to scoop up important fish stocks in the Northwest Atlantic until the stocks collapsed in the years after Spain and Portugal — both major fishing powers — joined the EU in 1986.

Exploiting a provision in the governing Convention allowing members to opt out of fisheries management measures established by the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO), an international organization it had helped to create in 1979, the EU abandoned its tradition of cooperation in NAFO and rejected the catch limits adopted for all major fish stocks. While the other members — including Canada, Norway, the USSR and Japan — stayed within the limits set by NAFO, for seven years the EU conducted an unrestricted fishery, allowing its vessels to take all the fish they could catch.

According to the EU’s own reports to NAFO, during the years of their onslaught, EU vessels caught a total of 629,752 metric tonnes compared to their allocations of 137,036 metric tonnes. In 1986 alone the EU received allocations totaling 23,260 metric tonnes but reported catches of 170,355.

The fish stocks EU vessels attacked — some of which, due to mistaken scientific assessments, were being fished beyond their sustainable limits even under NAFO management — could not withstand the enormous new catch levels to which they were subjected.

The result, after years of massive overfishing, was the collapse of the stocks — a man-made environmental disaster of a size that probably had never been seen before in the history of international high seas fisheries. Another result was economic and social upheaval for Canada’s east coast fishery, leaving thousands of fishermen and plant workers jobless, with devastating consequences for small coastal communities.

The environmental crime committed by the EU has never been labeled as such. Other nations made repeated efforts to get the EU to stop, believing that reason would prevail. They didn’t expect to fail.

The environmental crime committed by the EU has never been labeled as such. When it began, it was unclear that it was underway. As it continued year by year in the face of international condemnation, the other NAFO members made repeated efforts to get the EU to stop, believing that reason would prevail. They didn’t expect to fail.

When the EU finally stopped because the stocks had collapsed, name-calling would have served no purpose. The EU officials who had caused the disaster had been largely replaced by others, and the EU had started cooperating to help the stocks recover. The crime sank into history.

With the notable exception of the ‘Turbot War’, the EU has continued to cooperate within NAFO. It has generally controlled its fleets in the rebuilding of the stocks — though the most significant stock, northern cod off the northeast coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, has yet to recover and remains under moratorium.

But while the EU has been cooperating with the other members, it has come to play a dominant role in the organization, eclipsing the role previously played by Canada as the coastal state whose waters provide the primary habitat for most major stocks fished in both Canadian waters and in the high seas beyond. The EU also has been working to change NAFO from a strong conservation-oriented organization to a less-conservation-oriented one in which the interests of distant-water fishing states, led by the EU, predominate.

This was evident in 2007 when NAFO members, with the EU in the lead, adopted a new convention and updated fisheries enforcement rules. The new convention, which awaits formal approval, introduces a dispute settlement procedure to resolve disagreements over catch limits and quotas — but it is so complex and time-consuming that it is unlikely to prevent overfishing.

The new convention also changes the current majority voting formula to a 2/3 rule, ensuring that future conservation and enforcement rules will be weaker than they otherwise would be. In addition, it erodes existing provisions requiring that NAFO’s rules be consistent with those adopted by Canada within its 200-mile limit, and opens the door to NAFO management of fish stocks inside 200 miles, which is explicitly excluded in the current convention. The new enforcement measures, moreover, leave policing in the hands of flag states that have not always met their obligations in the past.

Fisheries in the Northwest Atlantic are entering a new era as the fish stocks begin to recover. Whether an EU-led NAFO will play a constructive role in this process remains to be seen.

Bob Applebaum, Earl Wiseman and Donald Barry are the authors of Fishing for a Solution: Canada’s Fisheries Relations with the European Union, 1977-2013, published by the University of Calgary Press.

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